


Testify to Time's Relentless Melt

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Series: Karen Page, Pigeon Photographer [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Animal Death, Character Study, Gen, Photographs, Photography, Pigeons, Slice of Life, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-05-06 13:41:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5419205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The reason behind some of Karen's weirder photos from <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4369481">A Moral Decision in One Eighth of a Second</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Testify to Time's Relentless Melt

**Author's Note:**

> Because people asked, here is an explanation for the dead pigeons. The description comes from one of my own dead pigeon photos. Karen's motives are her own.
> 
> (Previously posted [as a comment](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/34721213) at the end of "A Moral Decision".)

Karen takes photographs. Not in a serious way, not really. If she were serious, she'd have to buy an actual camera and learn about lenses and shutter settings and stuff, which would make it feel too much like work. But the world is full of fascinating moments and images, and sometimes she likes to catch and keep them. A cell phone is good enough for that. Most of her collection is pretty, or funny, or just flat-out ridiculous: warm things to make her smile when she flicks through her gallery. She needs more help smiling than she has for a while.

Dead pigeons are the opposite of warm.

But one month after Fisk's arrest, when she sees the first dismembered pile of feathers and flesh lying in a half-melted bit of snow at the sidewalk's edge, Karen stops and then can't quite make herself start moving again. The image snags in her mind, catches and pulls on things she doesn't want to break the surface. Maybe it's the contrast of dark gray feathers, damp and matted against still mostly-white snow. Maybe it's the red-brown mangled ruin of tiny ribs and pelvis, and the oddly clean perfection of pink scaly legs stretching out of that chaos. (They have light gray toenails, tiny and graceful and more pointed than she'd expect for a non-predator.) Maybe it's the sheer _waste_ : whatever killed this bird didn't care enough to finish its meal, and now the bone-sapping cold has hardened the remnants too much for scavengers' teeth. Maybe it's the mystery. Why this bird? Why this sidewalk? Why this morning?

In the street, a taxi horn blares. Karen startles out of her thoughts and realizes she's been staring at a dead pigeon for nearly five minutes.

She doesn't like losing time. Disorientation carries too many dark echoes.

She doesn't like death.

And yet, her hand creeps toward her purse, searching for her phone. She doesn't want to think about the feelings this poor bird is dragging out of the boxes she keeps locked in the depth of her mind. But maybe... maybe she _needs_ to. At least once in a while. If she doesn't want to break.

Karen snaps a photo. Then she forces herself to stand and walk away.

She may need the reminder of darkness as well as light, but that doesn't mean she has to rip herself open in front of half the city. She's caught the moment, locked in silicon and light. She'll face it in a time and place of her own choice.

And if she starts keeping an eye out for more dead birds, if she builds a collection of reminders and goads, that's nobody's business but her own.


End file.
